We began day 2 by being greeted with a display of some of Binh Pho’s work.  This was a great inspiration.  Binh’s work is truly magnificent and the pictures definitely do not do it justice.  The detail and intricacy of the work is something that can only be fully appreciated in person.  In the following pictures,  you can see the display that we were ale to look at for ideas and inspiration.

I had left off after day one – when we did thin-walled turning of face-grain-oriented bowl forms.  Day two started with a demo by Binh turning a taller end-grain-oriented hollow vessel.  The techniques here are very similar to those for turning a thin bowl.  However, since you are turning end-grain some different tools are used and the light used trick to measure thickness looses a bit of its effectiveness due to the depth of the vessel and amount of chips limiting your view as you turn.  Binh has a way around this that I’ll discuss later.

Binh uses a variety of hollowing tools for end-grain vessels.  These include: a spindle gouge, a Hunter Tool, a Rolly Munro hollowing tool and a Hugh McKay Boring Bar.  The first three tools are all readily available at woodturning outlets. The Hugh McKay tool is very unique and it allows Binh to turn his famous vessels with a vertical slab extending out of the top of the piece.  This tool allows the cutting head to be inserted straight through a hole in the top of the vessel and then bumped to angle it at either 45 degrees or 90 degrees from the shaft.  The original Hugh McKay patent has since been acquired by Deryl Duer (who assisted Binh during the week) and tools can be purchased directly from him.  Unfortunately, this tool is fairly expensive to manufacture and so the end customer cost s fairly high as well – still the tool does allow some very specific hollow turning that is not able to be accomplished as easily with any other tool.  Binh does not specifically favor any of these tools but uses all of them in particular areas  where they are most useful.

The hollowing is started by drilling a hole to the desired finished depth.  Material is then removed from the center out toward the rim – exactly opposite how you would turn a bowl because we are working on end grain for these forms.  This again is done in sections to the desired thickness as you move down the vessel.  One thing that Binh does to help with the measurement of wall thickness on these forms is to drill several 3/16″ holes into the form down one side.  Then as light is shined into the fom when stopped you can determine whether the walls are where you would like them.  Of course, this is only possible if you plan to pierce the piece later and some concept fof the design must be know so that you will drill into the right area.

The remainder of day two consisted of the class turning their own end-grain hollow forms.

For the rest of the week we moved on the surface design of turned pieces.  Binh uses three main techniques as part iof his surface design: piercing, texturing & burning, airbrushing and gilding.  Many of the initial techniques were demoed for us on a flat 1/16″ aircraft birch plywood panel.  These are very useful for prototyping designs and can be attractive in their own right.

Airbrushing was first as it is the most foreign to most woodturners.  Binh uses a dual-action airbrush that allows for separate flow of air and regulation of the amount oif paint applied.  The motion and hand control can be quite a challenge since you are moving your hand in fluid stokes while pushing doen the airbrush trigger for and and simultaneously pulling it back to regulate the amount of paint – let’s just say that I need to practice.  In the photos you can see Binh working on a demo panel.

There is a lot of masking and/or template shielding done for an airbrush design.  Things like masking tape and a clear tacky matt material called Frisket are used.  Every element of a design that requires a different color and/or treatment must be cut out with an X-acto knife and removed one at a time as paint is sprayed on.  Since we used transparent colors, darker colors are sprayed first and then lighter colors are added on top.  Needless to say, it is a time consuming process.

Binh often burns a thin outline around each element that he is going to airbrush or pierce.  This is done with a standard wood burning pen with a fine skew tip and minimal heat.  The desire is to just burn a faint line to define that part of the design.  Once the entire piece id designed and burned, then the painting and then piercing can begin.

Piercing is done last to keep the most integrity in the vessel or bowl while it is being handled for painting.  This is done with an air-powered dental NSK Presto tool that is actually used for dentistry – in fact the only difference between this tool and a dentists drill (which can also be used to pierce) is the form factor.  The NSK Presto is held like a pencil to allow you to almost draw on the wood.  The tool uses 1/16″ burs to pierce and/or carve the wood.  In addition to piercing through the wood the round-head burs can be used for various stippled effects on the surface.

In the pictures you can see the demo panel that Binh did during the class as well as a demo bowl that he did to show techniques on a round rather than flat surface.  The lower portion of the bowl is a peacock feather that is gold-leaf gilded in the center – a characteristic element of many of Binh’s designs.

After all of the turning during the first part of the week, I chose to work on a single panel and bowl design.  I tried to incorporate several of the techniques into both the panel and bowl for practice as well as future reference.  Below you can see several pictures of my work to the extent that I could complete it during the week.  The final bowl still needs the piercing to be completed at home.  Finally there is a class picture with everyone holding up their creations for the week.

The morning started with a demonstration by Binh on turning a thin walled open bowl and the afternoon was left for students to try their hands at the techniques learned.  Starting with a open form is best for learning the techniques of thin walled turning.  We will be moving on to larger and taller vessels in future days.  Taller forms will lend themselves better to the surface design techniques that we will employ to embellish the pieces.

In the pictures you can see Binh turning a thin walled open bowl as well as a selection of his tools.  Binh’s assistant for the week Daryl cut up green bowl blanks for the class.   There were a selection of Maple and Cherry blanks available.

For thin walled turning it is beneficial to shine a light source through the bowl to show the thickness of the walls.  Green wood is best for this due to its high moisture content and translucence – plus it’s just more fun to turn!   Another benefit to a light colored wood like Maple is that if airbrushed it will show translucent colors more accurately and if desired it can be bleached for an even more accurate color reproduction.

I turned two bowls.  One Maple and one Cherry.  The darkness of the cherry made it more difficult to turn to thin even wall thickness because the light did not show through the walls as readily as with the Maple.  In the pictures you can see my Maple bowl in various stages of completion.

These thin walled bowls (turned to a wall thickness of 1/16″) will dry fairly quickly if just kept in a paper bag for a week or two to moderate the release of moisture.  However, because we are going to do surface design and embellishment on them this week we needed a quicker dry time.  We used a microwave in intervals of 30 seconds cook and 20 minutes cool times.  If done carefully this will dry the piece quickly without cracking or burning.  The issue that must be dealt with is the distortion of the form as it dries – round bowls go oval as they dry.  The bowls can be massaged a bit as they cool to help with this distortion.  Otherwise, you live with it and/or use your embellishments to minimize or enhance it in the final design of the piece.

A couple of final shots showing my output for today’s class and a view of the nice laser-engraved name plate that each student receives to identify their workspace for the week and as a take-home memento of the class.

This year I am attending the school for another class from September 27-October 1, but, this time I am going in a completely different direction. I will be taking a turning and embellishment class with Binh Pho. Over the past year I have been doing more turning and I’ve also become increasingly interested in embellishments on turned pieces. The opportunity to work with Binh for a week was too enticing to pass up.

If you are not familiar with Binh’s life and work, it is a fascinating journey. Binh lived through some very difficult times as he escaped the communist takeover during the fall of Saigon in Vietnam. After a very eventful series of escape attempts and a period living on a small island with other refugees Binh finally made it to the US to reunite with his family. From there Binh was exposed to the art of woodturning and began to develop his turning skills and specialized embellishment techniques. The book he wrote about his life and work is truly a fascinating and inspiring read and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested.

Binh’s work is characterized by very thin walls into which he pierces and and airbrushes designs. The objects that he creates transcend beyond functional turned items into true works of art. Binh uses all of his life experiences to influence how he embellishes his work with each piece telling a story.  The pictures of a few of his pieces that you see here are taken from his web site.

While I’m definitely interested in learning specific turning techniques during my week with Binh, I am most intrigued to learn how he uses specific turned forms and various embellishment techniques to compose a design reflecting a specific idea. I would like to be able to take those techniques and apply them to my work – both in turnings and in furniture.

I’m really looking forward to this class. It’s always fun to get away and immerse yourself in something that you love to do and learning from someone of the caliber artist that Binh is will be a real thrill.

You can come along for a virtual visit as well because I will be blogging about the adventure right here during my week away.  So, check back often.

Turning wood is a great way to spend time in the workshop.  Projects can be done quickly and for very little investment in wood – especially if you turn found green wood!  Because of the nature of this work and the wood being somewhat “captive” on the lathe the dangers of turning can often be overlooked.

What follows are some points to help everyone turn more safely in their shops:

• Capture that wood dust – Just as in any other woodworking operation, turning and/or sanding at the lathe produces wood dust that is harmful to breathe.  What’s more, the dust produced is shot right back at the woodworker due to the rotation of the work.  Wood that is turned can often also be spalted and/or moldy from sitting in the elements before turning.  Turning or sanding this wood can release harmful spores into the air that if ingested can be very harmful to an even greater degree than normal wood dust.  As a result you should be extra-vigilant to wear personal respiratory protection while turning and sanding at the lathe at all times – especially when turning spalted wood.
• Speed is dangerous – Blanks that are turned on the lathe can often be heavy, large and out of balance.  Spinning a large out of balance load on the lathe at high speed can be deadly – even if you are wearing protective head gear (and it goes without saying that you should be wearing a face shield every time you spin something on the lathe).  The key things to remember when turning are: that you should always start at the lowest speed that your lathe allows and that you should stand out of the line of fire when you start up the lathe.  On my variable speed lathe, I turn the speed dial down to zero RPM before starting and gradually increase the speed until the piece is turned into balance – if you don’t have variable speed then just start at your lowest speed.  If your lathe is still unstable when spinning a blank, then you should get the piece more in balance by trimming it while off of the lathe before turning it. There are lots of rules of thumb out there for how fast you can safely spin a piece on the lathe in relation to its diameter.  However, I really never use them.  I find that for bowl/vessel turning I almost never have the need to turn higher than 600-800 RPM.  Sanding is never done above 300 RPM (often much lower) and for out of balance blanks I usually start turning below 200 RPM until true.  Of course, for spindle turning between centers lathe speeds are usually increased, but even then I rarely go above 1500-1800 RPM.
• The tailstock is your friend – Speaking of out of balance loads on the lathe, just because you have secured a piece onto a faceplate with screws or into a chuck with a tenon, that does not mean that your tailstock should be collecting dust in the corner of the shop!  When I turn, even after the piece is trued up and balanced, I will always use the tailstock for support until the last moment where I have to turn away the support point.  For turning the inside of bowls or vessels, I will follow this rule only on beginning hollowing operations of large pieces.  After that the speed rule takes care of me because I turn at very moderate speeds.
• Dull tools are dangerous – We have all probably heard the adage that a dull tool is more dangerous than a sharp one.  This is because if the tool is dull then you will naturally try to compensate for that lack of cutting effectiveness by applying more power to use the tool.  This same adage rings true for the lathe.  It’s true that we usually only sharpen our turning tools on a 100 grit grinding wheel and not on 8000 grit water stones but, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t sharp.  More importantly, a freshly ground lathe tool with cut wood effortlessly, reduce tearout and allow for better control when turning.  You should always be mindful of any extra effort that is required to cut wood at the lathe and when it becomes even a little more difficult, it’s time to sharpen.  Sharpening a lathe tool only takes seconds and then you are back to work.  Remember, as David Ellsworth is known to say: don’t grind the tool, dress the bevel – a quick, light touch at the grinder is all that it takes to get back to fantastic results at the lathe.
• Don’t bottom out – We often use holding devices when turning blanks on the lathe.  The most prevalent of these holding devices is the lathe scroll-chuck.  These chucks have 4 jaws that offer exceptional holding power for turning blanks (even without tailstock support – though we know you should always use the tailstock for support if you can!)  I almost always use my scroll-chuck to grip the outside of a round tenon that I first turn on the piece while between centers.  The biggest (and most dangerous) mistake that turners make with chucks is that they cut this tenon too deep so that the tenon bottoms out on the inside face of the chuck jaws.  This actually offers less support for the piece.  The correct way to use a chuck is the cut the tenon so that the top edges of the jaws rest flush against a flat on the piece at the base of the tenon, but with clearance between the bottom of the tenon and the inside faces of the chuck jaws.  This scenario offers tremendously better resistance against the rotational forces which try to knock to piece off of the lathe and into orbit around the shop!

Hopefully these tips are of some help to you as you turn wood on your lathe in the workshop.  I find that turning is occupying more and more of my time in the shop and I always follow these rules when I’m at work on my lathe.

As I’ve stated before, summer is usually a slow time of year for me in the shop.  There are just too many other things vying for time in the summer months – and in Upstate New York we have to take every advantage of the little bit of nice weather we get!

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been doing a bunch of turning lately.   I have been working to improve my skills and focusing more on the design aspects of various types of turned forms.  I’ve done a bunch of open bowls and also some semi-closed forms en route to developing my skills to do hollow-forms.

What you see in the (somewhat poorly photographed) pictures is a sampling of some of the pieces that I’ve done over the summer.  I did do a few more, but have already given them away to folks that offered up some freshly cut wood for my efforts.  As you can see there are open bowls, and semi-closed forms that I used to help develop the ability to cut away under the rim of a bowl.

I recently tried a hollow-form with some green Maple.  This was done with the limited hollowing tools that I own (the Sorby Multi-tip scraper and Sorby Hollow Master – the Multi-tip is a decent tool but, I would not recommend Hollow Master).  Well, let’s just say that I have more work to do to refine my skills.  I had a catch while hollowing and nearly tore the tenon right off the bottom of this piece (sorry for the somewhat blurry pictures).  Luckily, the piece did not go into orbit, but the catch was still exciting to say the least.  I think this was caused by the awkward curve of the Sorby Hollow Master tool as my not clearing out the shavings frequently enough.

Oh well, the wood was free and I’m learning with every piece that I spin on the lathe.  This event also gave me the impetus to order some real hollowing tools to satisfy this addiction…I mean hobby.

What I have been doing when I get a little time in the shop is more turning on the lathe.  As I have mentioned in the past, I’m a member of the Rochester Woodworkers Society.  I’m also a member of the Turning special interest group of the club.  This is a segment of RWS that is associated with the American Association of Woodturners.  For a couple of months now I have been working with a mentor from the Turning SIG in his shop.  My mentor Ralph has been turning for something like 30 years and teaching woodturning for a good portion of that time.

I started  the mentoring relationship because I wanted to learn more about turning hollow-forms.  However before we got started we thought it might be a good idea to work through some basic bowls in order to check and refine technique.   The thinking was that we could progress from an open bowl to a semi-closed form then to a hollow-form.  At this point we are working on a semi-closed form and I can definitely tell you that starting with the basics was the right way to go. I have learned as much about sanding as I have about refinements in tool technique!  Additionally, the process has taught me a lot about looking for the right form in a piece and the subtleties of why some forms look better than others.

I have said in the past that certain techniques seem to be well-suited to subtle hands-on illustration and correction.  Hand tool operations are one, and I think that woodturning is another.  There are certain things that are difficult to learn from a book or even videos. However, when a mentor reaches over and slightly adjusts the angle of your gouge as you turn a bowl, the message becomes clear very quickly!

In the pictures you can see a Chinese Elm semi-closed form that we are working on in Ralph’s shop (a couple of the pictures are of the bowl on my lathe as I complete the sanding sequence).  Also, you can see a Walnut bowl that I did in my shop after some mentoring by Ralph.  For the Walnut bowl I followed the sanding and finishing sequence that Ralph teaches to achieve a nearly flawless glossy finish.

If you don’t belong to a woodworking club, I’d urge you to join one – the commeraderie alone is a great benefit.  If you turn wood, finding a mentor is also a definite plus to help you progress at a much faster pace than you would if otherwise on your own.

The stock for the bowl started at about 8″ x 8″ x 3″ thick. I found the center of the stock and outlined the largest circle I could fit within the square. At the band saw I rough trimmed the stock round to make the truing up at the lathe easier. I mounted the trimmed stock to my faceplate centering it as best as I could. The faceplate was mounted to the side of the stock that will be the inside of the bowl so, the screw holes will eventually be turned away.

Once mounted on the lathe, with a bowl gouge I trued the edge until round and then flattened the face at low speed. With the stock true and balanced I started to rough out the outside shape of the bowl and also created a tenon that will be used to hold the bowl in a scroll chuck when hollowing out the inside.

In the picture you can see the rough shape of the outside of the bowl. With the outside turned I removed the stock from the face plate and mounted the tenon into the scroll chuck. Depending on the type of jaws your chuck has the tenon must be shaped appropriately. My chuck jaws have a slight dovetail recess so, I angles the sides of my tenon slightly to fit the jaws. It’s also important to be sure that the tenon does not bottom out in the chuck jaws because that tends to make the jaws grip a bit unstable.

The inside of the bowl was hollowed with a bowl gouge and finished off with a scraper. This was done slowly starting at the center of the bowl and working toward the outer edge while deepening the bowl. i worked the interior of the bowl until the walls were a fairly uniform 1/4″ thick. Once the hollowing was completed I sanded the interior with 100, 150, 180, and 220 grit sandpaper while turning on the lathe. With the interior sanding completed I applied a coat f Watco Natural Danish Oil to the inside, wet sanding it with 320 grit wet/Dry paper.

Next, I created a friction chuck from a piece of scrap. With some padding on the inside of the bowl I reversed it and applied pressure against the jam chuck with the tail stock. Centering the bowl to get it to run true was not too difficult because I had left the tail stock depression in the tenon from when the outside was turned. With the lathe running a slow speed I carefully turned away the foot leaving a small nub at the tail stock for support. Again, I sanded with the same grits and then applied and wet sanded Danish Oil to the outside of the bowl.

With the bowl largely completed. I removed it from the lathe and carved off the nub from the foot with a carving gouge and sanded the foot smooth. I signed the bottom with Sharpie and with a little oil applied to the foot, the bowl was complete. You’ve gotta’ love being able to complete a project in an afternoon!